A fringe too far

Well, we’ve once again reached that time of year, when, likely inspired by Coachella and other festivals, fashion designers decide to start pushing fringed items on us, so we can all pretend to be flower children or something.

“Festival fashion” has a lot to answer for, basically: especially when people who aren’t even going to festivals start thinking they have to wear some strange, 70s-inspired “costume”, normally involving flower garlands and the likes. But we digress.

Here’s an example of a pair of jeans that have been given the “fringe” treatment: with fairly comical results:

Now, we’re going to assume these will probably be popular. It’s festival season, after all: people are going to look at these and say things like, “It’s an interesting twist on an old classic!” and other stuff designed to make you think that if you wear jeans WITHOUT rips and tears and giant fringes around the ankles, then you’re hopelessly out-of-date, and just really quite tragic, basically. As for us, meanwhile: we look at these jeans and see an item of clothing that’s been the victim of a crime of fashion: and it’s not the only one, either:

OK, one garment like this could’ve been an accident, but two? Two seems like the start of a crimewave to us. The worst thing about these frayed hems is how deliberate they look: we don’t mind destroyed denim when it has that effortless, “these are my favourite jeans: I’ve had them for years” look to it. When it has more of an “I was up all night painstakingly trying to make my denim look old and worn in: please tell me I look cool!” look to it, we’re less impressed.